A STITCH IN TIME

David McCrackenCHICAGO TRIBUNE

Beneath an apricot sky half-obscured by a thick line of reddish-beige clouds streaked with blue, a six-square-block civic center plaza teems with activity, an urban hub reminiscent of the Place d`Etoile in Paris. From the plaza center, the buff-colored streets radiate like the spokes of a wheel, through the blue buildings tinged with pewter.

This vision for what was then the intersection of Congress and Halsted Streets was one aspect of architect Daniel Burnham`s 1909 Plan of Chicago that never made it past the drawing stage. But in a dramatic example of the history-conscious postmodern ethos in architecture and interior design, the plaza has been revived in a monumental tapestry by textile artist Helena Hernmarck that takes to heart Burnham`s dictum: ''Make no little plans.'' And in a setting the architect would find oddly familiar.

Her largest single work, Hernmarck`s 22-by-18-foot tapestry will be unveiled Wednesday at its new home in the Adams Street lobby of 190 South LaSalle. The Philip Johnson/John Burgee design echoes Burnham`s Masonic Temple, a Chicago landmark demolished in 1939.

In choosing the design for this commission, Hernmarck was quite aware of the city`s architectural renown. ''I like the idea of reminding Chicagoans of this fantastic plan,'' she said. ''There`s so much history here it seemed silly to ignore it.''

Hernmarck began researching the project at the Art Institute in 1986, but was originally drawn to another Burnham project. ''I was actually zeroing in on the 1893 Columbian Exposition. I felt that the lobby had to have something classical-looking and symmetrical, but the person who actually told me to take a look at the 1909 plan was (architect) Stanley Tigerman.''

Hernmarck finally settled on a watercolor rendering of the plaza by Jules Guerin, who executed many of Burnham`s ideas on paper, ''because it had the symmetry and the star. There`s a star design on the lobby floor, so that when you walk in over the star it kind of jumps up and continues in the tapestry. And the color is so fantastic.''

Her weaving technique, which uses a pattern stitch and an underlying background stitch (much like underpainting in another medium), called for more than 300 different hues of yarn for this piece. Incredibly, Hernmarck referred to this as one of her ''simpler'' designs in terms of color. It took more than 3,000 hours to execute.

''The complexity of the weave itself, and the more often you have to stop and start with a new color, are what usually determine your working time,''

she said. ''When I build a color, I usually use about 12 threads of slightly different colors, so it`s like pointillism in a way: The further away you stand the more they blend.''

Blending her tapestries with the spirit of a particular building has been, since the 1960s, the forte of this soft-spoken, 46-year-old weaver who

''never wanted to be anything else.'' At the age of 6, Hernmarck was given a small toy loom that was ''great fun, but there was no one to help me out when I ran into trouble.'' At 17, she began honing her skills at the Swedish State School of Art, Craft and Design.

With her husband, she now lives and works in Connecticut and has developed an international reputation as an extraordinarily talented and sympathetic artist whose tapestries grace the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art and complement buildings by such architects I.M. Pei and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.

Hernmarck is probably best known for the big, photorealistic tapestries that incorporate a wealth of detail with a surprising depth of focus, but in recent years she has turned to smaller non-representational works: floating rectangles of color a la Mark Rothko.

''I don`t often get the chance to do abstract work because most of these corporate clients want realism; when you send people rushing through a lobby it`s nice to have something that really hits them. Besides, I have two assistants and this is an expensive operation, and dealing with corporations is terrific because they pay you on time-little details like that,'' said Hernmarck with a laugh. ''But I`m starting to have more gallery and museum shows here and in Sweden, and I`m doing quite a lot of abstract, smaller pieces for my own pleasure.''

The Swedish connection is still important as the source of her material. Most of her tapestries are made of wool that she spins and dyes in the land of her birth.

Her medium afforded her another sort of surprise upon completion of ''The 1909 Plan of Chicago'' tapestry, woven in two parts. The right half ''hung 8 inches longer than the other,'' said Hernmarck, who was aghast. ''We spent another 160 hours tightening the warp by hand with crochet hooks, all three of us.''

The 200-pound final product took another team of three all day to hoist and hang in place at 190 S. LaSalle. Hernmarck`s woven memory of a city that never was, in a building that used to be, would make the shade of Daniel Burnham feel quite at home.